Tuesday 31st January – Roswell

We were only a ten-minute drive from Roswell town which was larger than we were expecting.  As is customary we drove to the VC and got our free parking for the day, though I don’t think on street parking was an issue in any case. It is very much low season here and times must be hard for the Alien-outlet owner as a number appeared to have closed down. 

These images are in memory of Dr Hutchings Goddard who laid the foundations for the science of rocket propulsion, using this tower (left) between 1930-1942 to launch liquid propellant rockets in order to develop means to explore extreme altitudes.

What Roswell looked like before the aliens came....

 

John Simpson Chisum (1824-1884) - the early west's most prominent cattleman, allegedly

 We picked up a Roswell Visitors’ guide but really all of the alien-themed sights were in close proximity to the International UFO museum and research centre on Main Street:

 
Everyone in Roswell is cashing in on the alien thing:

We spent nearly three hours in the Museum.  Fifty minutes of that was watching a documentary giving an overview of the ‘Roswell Incident’ in July 1947.  The museum states their primary goal is to provide information so the visitor is able to make up their own mind about the Roswell Incident, the UFOs and other possible extra-terrestrial phenomena.  Being a natural cynic I think that you can explain away most of the exhibits but, if it is all made up, you have to appreciate the scale of the effort this takes!  The film containing military personnel, reliable witnesses who all state that they were told not to discuss anything they saw must just be star actors.  The museum contains numerous typed exhibits which claim to be signed affidavits of many witnesses who either saw the craft or alien bodies first-hand, or were family members who received disclosures about this.  These can all be easily fabricated and attached to a name and a photograph of a supposed resident.  There was a lot of military presence in New Mexico in 1947, as the vast area known as White Sands to the West of Roswell is where the first atomic bombs were tested back in 1945 prior to the end of WWII.  Maybe the strange metallic-like debris that was discovered that day was part of military developments in technology and experiments that were being carried out in the area?  The military story appeared to change overnight and this is one thing that I find hard to explain away.  In 1947 Lt Walter Haut was serving as the Public relations Officer for Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF).  He states that he was told by his superiors to write and distribute the now famous July 8^th article that appeared in newspapers and on radio around the World stating that the US military had recovered a ‘flying disc’. 

A mock-up of the Roswell 'flying disc'

But the very next day an army General released an article stating that the ‘saucer’ was actually a weather balloon.  There began what the museum states was the best known and most documented UFO cover-up. 
 

I don’t think it helps that since 1947 metal meant to be from the crash site has been confirmed to contain Earth metals and further to this, another large-scale dig at the crash site in 2002 failed to unearth anything more to explain the sightings. 

I have an open mind to the thought of other life in the universe.  That would make sense, in an ever-expanding universe why wouldn’t there be other life-supporting planets?  The documentary puts the theory forward that UFOs were not sighted until we started experimenting with nuclear fission.  If we cannot travel far from our planet what risk are we to other life forms?  UFO researchers argue that extra-terrestrials only needed to start ‘keeping an eye on us’ since our break-through with nuclear technology.  They also suggest that we are purposefully being drip-fed information and images of ETs so that when they come back in future (say for example when we’ve finished working out how to reach Mars!) we won’t all be shocked.  Whatever you think as an individual, It is certainly an interesting topic for debate – conspiracy theories within conspiracy theories.  If aliens and craft are real, why the need for a cover-up?  This photo (right) shows an alleged staged press photo showing weather-balloon material being held by the military as that which landed in Corona, New Mexico in 1947 to support the complex cover-up.

This is apparently what it really looked like!

But this may be the reason for the cover-up....

We had intended to try to visit the actual alleged crash site.  However, we quickly learnt that Corona, the location of the ranch, is about 3 hours north-west of Roswell and is also private land that you cannot access.  So, apart from spending quality time in the museum becoming more and more cynical about the accounts of alien visitations and even abductions, there was little else to do in Roswell – apart from to buy a bumper-sticker and shot glass for the collection of course!